Resolutions 2016

My first published short story, “Smooth Stones and Empty Bones,” comes out in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction today! That’s my name, right there on the table of contents! And again on page 68! Go grab a copy and tell me what you think.

And there’s all those words I wrote

Now, with that out of the way, happy New Year! I just glanced back at the resolutions post I made last January and had a little laugh. Oh, resolutions. How fleeting you are.

So first, a post mortem on last year’s goals.

Words waiting to be assembled

Goal 1: Write more

At some point this year I stopped keeping track of my daily word count, mostly because of laziness (both in writing and recording that writing). In total I wrote 151,379 words. I’m sure I wrote more than that, but not a whole lot more. Maybe around 160k total, or about 500 words per day. Given that my goal was 600,000 (1,667/day), it’s not the greatest outcome, but I’m okay with it. It worked out to two completed, polished manuscripts and a couple short stories that I’m very happy with.

Goal 2: Walk more

As for walking, FitBit tells me that I walked over 1.7 million steps, or about 736 miles. That’s a little under 5,000 steps per day, which is half my general daily goal of 10,000 steps, but is not bad at all. Honestly that’s more than I thought I’d walked. It also has counted 646 flights of stairs, but that’s only since I got the FitBit that can actually measure that kind of thing in October after my other one died.

Mysterious cross stitch in progress

Goal 3: Art more

The third thing I had wanted to work on last year was my art. In my folder marked “2015 art” I have 13 drawings and 3 cross stitch projects. Since each of the drawings represents maybe 10 hours of work, and the cross stitch projects represent a lot more than that, that’s a decent time investment. Again, not as much as I wanted, but I’m not disappointed what I accomplished. I’ll be happy if I can do as much again this year.

Unrelated picture of my spider plant

This year’s writing-related goals:

Write an average of 500 words per day

Submit to more markets and start querying agents again

Try to write (or put a substantial amount of work into) a short story a week

Blog more often

This year’s exercise related goals:

Walk an average of 7,500 steps per day

Learn to do a pull up (at least one. Preferably more. I got a pull up bar for Christmas)

Run a 5k in less than 40 minutes (I’m a slow runner. Shut up.)

Send a 5.11 at the rock gym. (Currently the best I can do is around 5.9/5.10)

This year’s art related goals:

Try drawing a comic

Maybe take a class or something?

Start oil painting again

Okay, that’s about it. Tune in next year! Or sooner. You know. If you want.